The Zombie Papers: The Hollow Men Rebooted, Part 4

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The
Walking Dead, a popular
graphic novel turned TV show, is one of the fore-runners in the contemporary
zombie writing. In the world of The
Walking Dead, a small group of survivors, led by a Sheriff, fight to
survive in a post-apocalyptic zombie-populated world. The zombies, called “walkers” are decaying
corpses with insatiable hunger. The
Walking Dead’s zombies eat the flesh of humans and animals alike. When they are feeding, they are so distracted
by their hunger that they often miss the chance for fresh human meat as the
heroes make hasty exits. In fact the
“walkers” of The Walking Dead seem to be unmotivated by anything other
than hunger. Many scenes in the
television show depict the “walkers” in a kind of suspended animation until a
human passes. The infection that caused
the zombie-like condition, however, lies dormant in all of the survivors. Upon death, even those who initially survived
the pandemic will reanimate. The notion
that every living person has living within them the potential to be a “walker”
is important. While not all the
survivors in The Walking Dead are “good” people, everyone has the
potential to becoming an unthinking, unfeeling, consuming reanimated corpse.

Other
zombie films, such as the 2004 horror/comedy Shaun of the Dead by
writer/director Edgar Wright, are more direct in playing up the mindless way
with which we make our way through our daily lives. Protagonist Shaun wakes up the morning of the
zombie apocalypse and heads to the local convenience store to grab a
drink. Along the way, he passes obvious
signs of mayhem. He slips in a puddle of
blood in the convenience store, complains there is no newspaper for sale,
shrugs off a zombie he thinks is pan-handling, and doesn’t notice his neighbor’s
dead body on the front steps. Shaun flops
in front of the TV, flipping past news reports of a crisis, and sips his Diet
Coke. Shaun’s obliviousness begs the
question: if the zombie apocalypse happened, would we notice?

As
Columbus, protagonist of the 2009 blockbuster film we Zombieland ponders
“why am I alive when everyone else around me has turned to meat,” we wonder
what it is about our world that we find so unfulfilling. In Zombieland, a virus mutates from
mad cow disease to a strain that infects humans. Columbus survives by keeping to a list of
rules. The first two rules on his list
are quite telling. Rule number one is
“cardio.” Columbus warns us that a lack
of connection with your physical self will ultimately lead to your death. His second rule addresses common sense:
double-tap (always shoot a zombie twice).
The two most basic rules in this movie tell us to avoid becoming a
“human happy meal,” you need to be connected to the body and the mind, to be
healthy and to think. Yet in Zombieland,
the undead rule and the living are on the run.

So what does it all mean? Check back next time for the final installment of The Zombie Papers.

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